Wired Geeks

Archive for the ‘Mobile OS’ Category

Earlier this week we reported that Motorola would be gearing up for an Android 2.1 update for the DROID. Oops! It turns out that it might not be coming that soon after all. And here we were etching notches into the wall as we counted down the days. Even after announcing that the update would be available this week on its Facebook page, Motorola won’t be dishing out the much-anticipated Android 2.1. this week as Motorola said it was a bit premature on their part (no kidding?!) but it will be coming soon. Sorry to disappoint, DROID owners! In an e-mail to PhoneScoop, Verizon said, “The Droid over-the-air software upgrade is expected to rollout soon. It will automatically be pushed to phones when ready and Verizon Wireless customers will only have to accept the free download for continued use and enjoyment of this feature packed device.”

Some folks love it. Some folks don’t. Others… take naps. However you feel about the TED conference, you’re probably going to be a little bit more jealous that you’re not there after reading this. According to tweets coming out of the conference, Google just had an Oprah moment mid-show and gave everyone in attendance a free Nexus One. At $6,000 a pop for tickets, the majority of folks attending the conference probably aren’t exactly digging through their couch for change – but considering how many influential or otherwise powerful folks are there, it’s probably not a bad investment on Google’s part.

Nexus One owners have been griping about the device’s 3G connectivity issue since its release, and Google felt your pain and came to the rescue (even though they did sorta blame T-Mobile’s small 3G footprint for this). Or so we thought. After releasing an over-the-air update which was intended to resolve this problem, users are still reporting bugs. One Nexus One owner reported that simply placing his hand on the lower-left side of the phone would cause his device to switch from 3G to EDGE. It screams “hardware issue” to us, but let’s hope that another software fix will take care of this. Otherwise, it could turn into a sticky situation for Google, and maybe even HTC, the phone’s manufacturer. Check out the video below and see for yourself.

HTC has launched a new Windows Mobile device which is powered with 6.5 Professional Operating System(OS)of Windows. There are also some reports coming that, many people call it as HTC Leo 3, this HTC Leo is a large device, having a smooth touch screen with some shortcut buttons for functioning the OS and HTC’s Touch FLO 3D User Interface. The handset also comes equipped with a 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, which gives us a great speed and smooth functionality.The other feature included in the design of HTC Leo are:
1. Wifi with router capabilities
2. 3G with HSDPA and EDGE/GPRS
3. Bluetooth Capability
4. Global Positioning System(GPS) with A-GPS
5. A Bluetooth
6. MicroSD card support
7. 3.5mm earphone socket.
The price of the handset has not yet been announced officially, it may be announced during the release of the handset.The handset is expected to be released forand to the rest of the world in the later months.

In the World of mobile OS, Google Android is a challenger still and plays a vital role, as the amount of devices used for the purpose of running the system are about to come out in the coming months along with the combination with its open approach.The main reason for the success of Apple’s App Store for iPhone/iPod is measured by counting the number of applications that has been developed for the platform, it is around 70,000 applications till now.But Google didn’t disclose the number of applications which are exactly available on Android Market, so it is difficult to compare the two on this particular level.But, I am very thankful to AndroLib,as it provides us a useful website from which we can browse Android applications from our PC.There are more than 10,000 applications and games available on this platform today and above all, majority of the applications are available at free of cost and to be exact atleast 64.2% of applications are for free. The company has to admit first that there are more than 10,000 applications tracked by them, but Google says that there is no way to get an idea of the exact number of applications in Android market.But,the Android market has grown upto 4.4 times in just four months.This is a great achivement for Google.

In the begining of this month a Facebook application for Android was launched, this is a much anticipated Facebook application specially designed for Android. Even though it is a official release ,as said by the company, but a news came out that this application was not released by Facebook, but Google has built this application themselves,as they thought that having a Facebook application was more important to them. In this Facebook application there is no messaging facility, just the news stream is displayed and it has a ability to post status updates and we can take/upload photos to Facebook. The cool stuffs which are available in Facebook 3.0 application for iPhone users are not yet available in Android. But,the application runs fast in Android when compared to iPhone. In iPhone many people goes to Facebook through browser as the application was too slow to use.But the application in Android is more quick as it can do three or four functions quickly without a single problem. Another wonderful feature is that,notifications of new events can be viewed upto date, as Android application has the ability to run in the background,even though you are not actively using the application you can see this stuff in the background.Below there is a video demo about this application.

Open Table was launched on iPhone in November of last year. A very first comment came from a Gentleman named “Chris” saying that “Unless Open Table comes on Android,it’s a useless application”. A very good news came for “Chris” this week that, online restaurant reservation service launched their application onto the Android market with both their web service and the  available on other platforms.We can check for and reserve tables using this Open Table Android application and we need not dial any of the numbers or contact the persons in the restaurants for reservation purpose.Just enter the date,time, and size of the party on the open table, it will provide us a list of restaurants that are applicable for you, just pick one of them and confirm and your name will get on to the list by open table.The applications in Android always takes a step further than the iPhone variant,This makes use of Android ability to tie multiple applications together.Both WHERE and GoodFood are now partners of the Android market,which allows the customers to jump immediately into Open Table and make their reservations.Moreover,this application is easy and works well ,the best and above all, it is for free.Check it out in the Android market.